Americans have enjoyed the pleasures of drinking iced tea for almost a century. According to one account, the beverage had its origins in the late 1800s as "iced tea a la Russe" and was so named because it was served in tall glasses as the Russians served hot tea. Another story credits a hot Englishman visiting the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904 with chilling his hot tea and thus giving the country a new cold drink. Whatever the precise origin of this refreshing beverage, it is currently enjoyed by ever-increasing numbers of tea drinkers, particularly when the weather is warm. A recent survey confirmed that tea consumption has increased substantially over the last several years. In the last year alone, tea consumption in the United States was about 71/2 gallons per person. Many iced tea drinkers, moreover, especially those in the Southeastern United States, prefer to drink their iced tea sweetened.
With greater frequency, large numbers of these iced tea drinkers are purchasing their iced tea at fast food restaurants. However, the iced tea brewing and dispensing systems currently available to the food service industry for use by fast food restaurants are somewhat archaic in comparison to the systems available for dispensing other beverages and, further, most do not dispense presweetened tea.
Depending on the size and activity of the restaurant, iced tea is currently provided to customers in a variety of ways, from simply pouring the tea from a supply stored in a jar or the like that was prepared by employees with boiling water and loose tea or tea bags, much as it would be done in the home, to dispensing the tea from a premixed concentrate mixed with water. The first method is obviously time consuming, and the tea produced is likely to vary substantially from batch to batch, depending upon the care taken by the employee charged with the responsibility for brewing it. Consequently, this method is not a cost-effective way to produce fresh tea of consistently high quality for a restaurant with a large volume beverage business. Although the dispensing of tea from a premixed concentrate may require less labor and time than brewing tea by the batch, the tea dispensed from such a concentrate simply does not have the same taste as freshly brewed tea. In addition, if the concentrate also contains sugar or another sweetener, it must be handled carefully after it is opened to minimize microbial growth.
Automatic tea brewers are available that brew tea from real tea leaves and, therefore, produce a tea of good quality. However, these units combine the brewing and dispensing apparatus in a single countertop unit, which in many restaurants is unacceptable because scarce countertop space must be dedicated to this equipment. Other available tea dispensing equipment includes a tea brewer which may be located in any convenient space separate from a dispenser, which usually includes a three to five gallon storage tank. However, these dispensers must be located on a countertop easily reached by restaurant employees filling beverage orders and therefore have similar space requirements as the combination tea brewer and dispenser. One currently available iced tea brewing and dispensing system does include a tea storage tank at a location remote from the dispensing location and requires only an additional beverage dispensing spout rather than additional countertop space for dispensing the tea. However, this tea brewing system, like those previously mentioned, requires near boiling water for brewing the tea. Therefore, even though the tea is stored at room temperature once it has been brewed and will not cause much of the added ice to melt when it is dispensed from the tea storage container, the freshly brewed tea is quite warm and will readily melt ice. As a result, the restaurant patron who has the bad fortune to be the first one to order tea after a new batch has just been brewed will find that he has a cup of tepid, watery tea rather than the cool iced drink he had expected.
The foregoing tea brewing and dispensing systems suffer from an additional disadvantage as a result of the relatively short period of time during which tea retains its flavor and remains fresh. Unlike many other beverages, even unsweetened tea may "spoil" and become unfit to drink after only several hours when it is stored at room temperature. The aforementioned tea brewing and dispensing systems, therefore, must be emptied of undispensed tea at least at the end of each day. If the tea is allowed to stand in the storage tank overnight or longer, mold and bacterial growth are likely, and stringent sanitization of the storage and dispensing equipment will be required. The iced tea concentrates currently available claim to have about a three month shelf life. However, once the container holding the concentrate has been opened, the tea is also likely to deteriorate in flavor and quality unless preservatives and flavor enhancers are added to the tea. Since many iced tea consumers drink tea because it is a "natural" product, the use of such additives is objectionable.
A growing segment of the iced tea market, especially in the Southeastern United States, prefers to drink presweetened iced tea. The only currently available presweetened tea suitable for dispensing in fast food and similar types of restaurants is in the form of a concentrate, which, as discussed above, suffers from some significant disadvantages. The presence of a sweetener in the concentrate, moreover, only increases the likelihood of bacterial and mold growth once the container is opened, in part because the container holding the concentrate is intended to be stored at room temperature. None of the other known tea dispensing systems provides for the inclusion of a sweetener to enable the dispensing of presweetened iced tea. Consequently, the restaurant employees must either manually add sweetener to the tea storage container prior to dispensing the presweetened tea or provide sweetener separately in a form that can be added to the tea by the restaurant patron after it has been dispensed into an ice-filled cup. The sweetener is typically in the form of dry granules of cane sugar or a sugar substitute packaged in individual serving sized packets and is usually given to the patron with a stirrer to assist in mixing the sweetener with the iced tea. However, as anyone who has ever sweetened iced tea in this manner knows, the dry granules do not readily dissolve in cold iced tea, and properly sweetened tea may be a rather elusive goal.
Available iced tea dispensing equipment is notoriously difficult to clean and sanitize properly. The dispensing nozzle heads tend to have an unacceptably high bacterial count unless they are cleaned thoroughly every night. Additionally the systems with tea storage reservoirs can be hard to clean and, therefore, unsanitary. When sweetener is added to the tea, maintaining a clean, sanitary system becomes more difficult.
Beverage dispensing systems for dispensing sweetened beverages, such as carbonated soft drinks, which take up little or no counter space and keep the soft drink syrup concentrate cool, thus avoiding spoilage, are known in the patent art. U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,440,365, 2,894,387 and Re 32,179 illustrate such systems. However, the systems shown in these patents are designed to dispense only soft drink syrup concentrates and carbonated water, and there is no suggestion anywhere that such systems may be used to brew, sweeten and dispense freshly brewed, presweetened iced tea. Moreover, none of the syrups disclosed in the aforementioned patents would be suitable for sweetening iced tea.
The prior art, therefore, fails to provide either a system or a method for brewing and dispensing high quality, fresh presweetened iced tea which occupies minimal space, is easily cleaned and sanitized and maintained in a sanitary condition, and can be used in conjunction with existing beverage dispensing equipment to provide a ready supply of cool, fresh sweetened tea.